


silver mourning

by novel_concept26



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27194431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: A fill for a Tumblr prompt: You know how there are all those stories about someone waking up one morning after some intense event and their hair is completely white? There are at most, what did you decide, 5-6 years between Dani’s return to Bly and Flora’s wedding? I wonder if Jamie wakes up the first morning after returning to Bly to find her hair is completely silver.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 9
Kudos: 172





	silver mourning

It’s days before she notices. It’s not that she’s not looking in mirrors; Jamie can’t for her life seem to _stop,_ her eyes desperately seeking any reflective surface in the room. _She’ll be there_ , she tells herself, repeating it like a desperate mantra. _She’ll be there._ Dani couldn’t stop seeing herself in pools, in dishes washed to gleaming, in car doors fresh from a spring polish. Dani saw herself everywhere. 

So, Jamie looks. Jamie looks with the fanatic desperation of a holy order, from the moment she wakes from her bare hour or two of sleep each night, sleepwalking through days that feel longer and longer without Dani’s hand to reach for. She looks, and she looks, and she doesn’t _see_. Not Dani’s perfect face, not mismatched eyes that crinkled at the corners with laughter, not her dimples, not the worried divot between her brows. She doesn’t see Dani, and she certainly doesn’t see herself. Why would she waste the energy? Jamie is here. Jamie _knows_ she’s here. That’s half the problem. 

It’s not until they fly in for the funeral that she realizes, and it’s only because Owen turns up on her doorstep shaking out an umbrella, water sluicing off his glasses, and stops dead. His eyes are wide. Jamie’s are almost too distracted to notice; she’s searching the puddle at his feet, the framed photos by the entry, the shine of his watch. One blue eye, one brown: that’s all she needs. One blue eye, one brown. 

Nothing. Still, nothing. But that’ll change. That will have to change. Dani always comes home. 

And even when Owen walks her into the bathroom--with its sink brimming over and its tub spilling onto the tile--even when Owen turns her by the shoulders and forces her gaze to the mirror, she almost doesn’t see it. Those eyes are the wrong color. That face isn’t the right shape. It’s Dani’s shirt she’s wearing, Dani’s scent already almost gone from the collar, and for a minute, she clenches her eyes shut. _When you open them_ , she thinks. _When you open them, she’ll be there. One blue eye. One brown._

“Jamie,” he says, and it’s like ice down her back. For a moment, it isn’t his voice. For a moment, it’s Dani’s ragged desperation, that lost girl cracking open from her wife’s somber expression. The way she said her name that day, the ends of her hair dripping, the unplugged quality of her certainty so solid, it almost knocked the legs out from under Jamie to come up against it. 

“Jamie,” he repeats, and he’s Owen again. Brows drawn tight. Mouth trembling. His finger smudges the glass, and she wants to smack it away. Wants to scream. _Don’t. It has to be clean. I have to be able to_ see. 

He’s pointing, and she blinks. Blinks again. The tears are coming now, like they do so many times a day, and she catches herself thinking that awful, awful thought again: how Dani didn’t blink, down there at the bottom, with silt and stone shifting around her frame. How Dani won’t ever blink again. 

He’s pointing. Pointing. The tip of his finger still touching pristine glass. She swallows, forcing herself to bear down on it with all the focus she can muster.

Silver. There’s silver there, where she remembers very little. Oh, there were strands around the temples, lurking beneath the brown. She’d point them out after a shower, and Dani would wrap one around her finger, gently, and kiss her brow. “Distinguished,” she’d say, and something like a ghost of that old guilt would flicker across her features for just a heartbeat. Then she’d grin, and she’d kiss Jamie again--better this time, a proper kiss, pushing her back against the counter, and--and--

Silver. All over. Barely any color left, really. When did that happen?

Would Dani like it?

_I’ll ask her_ , Jamie thinks, resolute as a weed. _I’ll ask her when she comes. She’s coming home. She always does._

Owen doesn’t press the issue. 


End file.
